Using Asynchronous AdSense Ads with Responsive Design

JavaScript affects the loading time of your web pages. That’s because when you include any JavaScript code in your HTML web page synchronously, the browser will download and execute the script first before it can render the other HTML tags that com

e after the script.

Steve Souders, web performance engineer at Google, says that JavaScript loaded synchronously is the “weakest link” and, in some cases, JavaScript can even block your web pages from rendering.

Asynchronous AdSense Ad Tags

Services like Google Analytics, Google DFP, Twitter and Facebook have therefore switched to asynchronous JavaScript for serving advertisements and widgets. This is a more efficient method as the scripts load in parallel and do not block the web page from rendering.

Also, if the web server hosting the JavaScript file has become slow or offline, the other HTML elements of your web page would still render just fine in the browser.

Google too offers publishers the option of using non-blocking asynchronous ad tags for serving AdSense ads on their websites. If you wish to offer a better experience to your visitors, and also improve your site’s page speed, it may be a good idea to migrate your old AdSense ad code to the new asynchronous JavaScript tags.The default async AdSense tags aren’t however compatible with Responsive Design so here’s a little bit of JavaScript you can use to make your async Google ads responsive.

To get started, open your AdSense dashboard and created ad units for all the different sizes (leader board, rectangles, square, buttons, etc.) Now replace AAA, BBB, etc. in the code with the corresponding IDs of the generated ad units. Also remember to replace ca-pub-XXX in line #9 with your real AdSense publisher ID.

The script calculates the width of the available ad space and then serves the largest ad unit that will fit into that space.

<div id="google-ads-1"></div>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
 
  /* Calculate the width of available ad space */
  adWidth = document.getElementById("google-ads-1").offsetWidth;
 
  /* Replace ca-pub-XXX with your AdSense Publisher ID */
  google_ad_client = "ca-pub-XXX";
 
  /* Replace AAA, BBB, etc. with the respective Ad Slot IDs */
  if ( adWidth >= 728 )
    google_ad_slot = ["AAA", "728", "90"];  /* Leaderboard 728x90 */
  else if ( adWidth >= 468 )
    google_ad_slot = ["BBB", "468", "60"];  /* Banner (468 x 60) */
  else if ( adWidth >= 336 )
    google_ad_slot = ["CCC", "336", "280"]; /* Large Rectangle (336 x 280) */
  else if ( adWidth >= 300 )
    google_ad_slot = ["DDD", "300", "250"]; /* Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) */
  else if ( adWidth >= 250 )
    google_ad_slot = ["EEE", "250", "250"]; /* Square (250 x 250) */
  else if ( adWidth >= 200 )
    google_ad_slot = ["FFF", "200", "200"]; /* Small Square (200 x 200) */
  else if ( adWidth >= 180 )
    google_ad_slot = ["GGG", "180", "150"]; /* Small Rectangle (180 x 150) */
  else
    google_ad_slot = ["HHH", "125", "125"]; /* Button (125 x 125) */
 
  document.write (
   '<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:' + google_ad_slot[1] + 
   'px;height:' + google_ad_slot[2] + 'px" data-ad-client="' + google_ad_client + 
   '" data-ad-slot="' + google_ad_slot[0] + '"></ins>'
   );
 
  (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
 
</script>
 
/* If you have multiple Ad Units, include this line only once */
<script async src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js">
</script>

Asynchronous AdSense Ads with Responsive Design

If you are planning to have multiple AdSense ad units on the same page, the same code will work except that you need to replace google-ads-1 with google-ads-2 in line # 1 and 6. The adsbygoogle.js script in line #40 only needs to included once in your web page. You may as well place it at the bottom on your page just before the the closing </body> tag.

An important disclaimer though. I had official approval for the previous AdSense Responsive script but not for this one yet so you may want to check with your AdSense account manager before making the JavaScript live on your website.